· History Matters - Documents and website links relating to labor. Site is keyword-searchable. Links to other labor history websites and on-line exhibitions. Many of the documents listed on this site are drawn from this terrific resource. Visit it for lots of other information, including syllabi and strategies for teaching

· Labor and Working Class History Association the key organization for labor historians, with numerous links and a guide to historians in the field

· Center for Working-Class Studies a terrific site with many links

· H-Labor email discussion list

· WWW-VL: HISTORY: UNITED STATES: LABOR HISTORY

· American Labor History: An On-line study guide --Mark Lause’s site, with links to organizations and brief historical information

· Illinois Labor History Society Website: sites in Illinois history, curriculum, books, much more!

· Bread and Roses: Poetry and History of the American Labor Movement Edited by Jim Zwick includes entire books from late 19^th and 20^th century as well as 100s of poems, songs, articles.

· African-American Labor History --lots of links, chronologies, booklists, video lists, some primary documents

· Digital History Resource Guide to Labor History

· Jay’s Labor History and Class Struggle Links

· Women social movements history, at SUNY-Binghamton, has numerous documents and lesson plan ideas but it also seems to be down often—keep trying

· Holt Labor Library –Labor Studies and Radical History

· Labor History on the Internet Dept. of History Tennessee Tech

· Links to Primary Source Materials in Labor History

· Pittsburgh and Western Pennsylvania Labor Legacy Site – links to research and document and photos sites from late 19^th thru 20^th century

· Museums and Labor History Societies from the LAWCHA site

· LOST LABOR: Images of Vanished American Workers 1900-1980 155 photographs. Many of the images document factories and jobs that no longer exist and examples of lost skill and crafts, a reminder of the individuals who helped to build industrial America.

· America at Work, America at Leisure 150 films accessed from the Library of Congress collections, digitized, 1890s-1915

· U.S. Labor And Industrial History World Wide Web Audio Archive including UE’s Nathan Spero who argued for comparable worth for women in the 1940s, Teach In with the Labor Movement (1997), Sam Darcy

· Presentations of Public History Online: Focus on Work & Labor History

· Library of Congress American Memory collection use search engine to search for workers, unions, labor

· Inventory of American Labor Landmarks organized by topic and by state

· From Carbons to Computers: The Changing American Office

Reference

· My Labor History Book List updated regularly, but is still spotty or out of date in areas. It has a selected # of articles as well

· List of the top influential books in labor history (according to list participants on h-labor listserv)

· Michael Gordon’s Bibliography of Labor History

· Organization of American Historians Bibliography of Labor History

· History bibliography developed by Center for Working Class Studies includes books, films

· My list of some labor-oriented films and videos and documentaries

· A reviewers list of films on solidarity

· Michael Gordon’s list of films on labor

· Illinois Labor History Booklist (and bookstore)—please buy your labor history books from this wonderful public history organization

· Labor History Timeline

· Eclectic list of events in US labor history

· Reference Sources In U.S. Labor Studies Bobst Library

· WWW Virtual Library-- Labour History

· WWW Virtual Library--Economic and Business History

· History at the Department of Labor with links to governmental agencies

· Quotes on Labor issues

· Labor and Working Class History Association with links to Archives Oral History Collections Journals

· History Matters General Search Page has links to numerous reference materials

· Business history guide from the University of Maryland

· Labor Research portal from Berkeley

· Bureau of Economic Analysis statistics on economics across time

· Directory of Labor Archives in the United States and Canada

· Links to Primary Source Materials in Labor History and Labor Studies

· State Historical Society of Iowa Labor Collection Oral history etc

· Mark Lause’s list of research and archival links Research institutions including foundations Libraries Instructional sites

· Labor History Sources in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress

Teachers’ Corner – Lesson plans

· Teaching in Working-Class Studies

· History Matters - Documents and website links relating to labor. Site is keyword-searchable. Links to other labor history websites and on-line exhibitions. Links to lesson plans and information on teaching. Links to discussion groups for subjects that include labor and social history

· Teacher Lesson Plan: Using Oral History: This lesson presents social history content and topics through the voices of ordinary people. It draws on primary sources from the American Memory Collection, American Life Histories, 1936-1940.

· Curriculum guide for k-12 from the Illinois Labor History Society

· Who Really Built America?

· Unions Then and Now

· Website on the Diary of Martha Ballard terrific site--with documents, teaching lessons, lots more; Ballard was a midwife in 18^th century Maine

· Digital Slavery – WWW resources and teacher plan ideas from University of Houston site

· Lesson Plan for K-12 on “Jobs in Jamestown, Virginia” from Virtual Jamestown – there are also other lesson plans on same site

· Lesson Plan for K-12 on “Language and Runaway Slaves”

· Comparing Plantation and Factory Rules - a lesson plan with links to primary documents, showing comparison between northern “free labor” textile mills and slave labor plantations

· Talk Show on the Lowell Strike of 1834 or 1836 lesson plan for High school, with links to primary documents

· Lowell and the Factory System

· Women and Social Movements, 1820-1940 - Searchable site, with important primary documents and lesson plans on women and labor, including the 1909-1910 New York shirtwaist strike, Lawrence, Massachusetts textile strike of 1912, the 1938 Pecan Shellers strike in San Antonio, and much much more

· Materials on 1877 from Maryland State Archives, with links to primary documents (newspaper, government, photos) and suggested reading materials and lesson plans

· Colorado Coal Field War Project, with Photos, bibliography, links, teachers’ lesson plans corner, archaeology

· Child Labor in America

· Teaching the Local -- Working Class Studies – Lesson plan projects of High School teachers in the Mahoning Valley Institute

· U.S. Steel Gary Works – Lesson plans on the steel industry and the workers

· Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor lesson plans using Lewis Hine’s powerful photos

· How Did Florence Kelley's Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

· THE LIFE AND TIMES OF EMMA GOLDMAN A Curriculum for Middle and High School Students (free speech fights)

· The Fight for Bread and Roses—links to documents about 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike -from the Women and Social Movements website—links to numerous documents and lesson plans

· Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl (sweatshops, women, etc)

· Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Mill World

· 38 documents and a lesson plan on the Chicago Race Riot (this site has middle school and high school lesson plans for a number of other historical issues as well)

· 40 Documents and lesson plan on the Bonus March

· 1938 Pecan Shellers Strike – civil liberties, women, Latino, African American

· Puerto Rico Women Needleworkers and the New Deal

· The New Deal Labor Unions - Then and Now Lesson plans, including Background on Labor History, Labor in the 1930s, the Flint Sit-Down Strike

· The Hard Hat Riots - 1970 –see link to teaching activities

Labor Systems of Early America

· A short guide to the tribes of North America (site also has a bibliography)

· Manners and Customs of the Indians 1637 (New England)

· “Their Extraordinary Great Labor”: Roger Williams Observes Indian Customs and Language, 1643

· “Your People Live Only Upon Cod”: An Algonquian Response to European Claims of Cultural Superiority

· Some Occupations of Colonial America

· Pedro Naranjo Relates the Pueblo Revolt, 1680—the Pueblo revolt was an anti-colonial labor uprising

· “The Moment That The Snows Are Melted The Indian Women Begin Their Work”: Iroquois Women Work the Fields

· Richard Hakluyt Discourse of Western Planting (1584)

· Website on the Diary of Martha Ballard terrific site--with documents, teaching lessons, lots more; Ballard was a midwife in 18^th century Maine

· Laws on Indentured Servants

· Servants and Slaves and their legal disposition 1619, Virginia

· A list of those executed in Bacon’s Rebellion (1676) from Virtual Jamestown website

· Indentured servants and transported convicts

· Indentured contract of William Buckland (1755) from Virtual Jamestown website

· Profile of Richard Boulton, Indentured servant

· Ads for Runaway indentured Servants

· Ran off. Ads for runaway slaves and runaway wives

· “Our Plantation Is Very Weak”: The Experiences of an Indentured Servant in Virginia, 1623

· They Live Well in the Time of their Service”: George Alsop Writes of Servants in Maryland, 1663

· Work and Labor in this New Land are Very Hard (1750, German immigrant to Philadelphia Gottlieb Mitteberger describes redemptioners)

· Gottlieb Mittelberger Warns His Countryman of the Perils of Emigration, 1750—on the trip over; compare with Equiano (in Slave labor section)

· The “Infortunate” William Moraley Tries His Luck in America, 1729.

· “We Unfortunate English People Suffer Here”: An English Servant Writes Home 1756

Slave Labor

· Slavery Bibliography

· WPA-collected Slave Narratives (oral history from 1930s, memories of 19^th century slavery))

· Slavery from Digital History Site , organized by chronology and subject

· Library of Congress Slave Narratives 2300 narratives, 500 black and white photos

· Comprehensive collection of North American Slave Narratives (University of North Carolina site)

· Chronology of the History of Slavery Holt House

· WWW-VL: HISTORY: US: SLAVERY

· The Atlantic Slave Trade and Slave Life in the Americas: A Visual Record from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities—great for teaching

· Slaves and the Courts 1740-1860 American Memory collection of the Library of Congress. It contains 105 documents (8700 pages) that cover an assortment of trials and cases both from the United States and Great Britain”; documents of both slaveholders and abolitionists

· Servants and Slaves and their legal disposition 17^th century Virginia

· Slavery and Law in Virginia from Colonial Williamsburg website –Chronology and statistics

· Olaudah Equiano site, with links to bibliography, maps, etc

· Documents and Perspectives on Slavery from PBS website Africans in America

· Sotterly Planation Slaves -Alice Elsa Kane(1840 -1889) Hillery Kane 1848 -1928 Frank Kane 1848-1928 NEW

· Lesson Plan for K-12 on “Jobs in Jamestown, Virginia” from Virtual Jamestown – there are also other lesson plans on same site

· Lesson Plan for K-12 on “Language and Runaway Slaves”

· Slave Resistance Lesson plan for high school, using slave narratives and other primary documents

· Documents:

o A Slave Frees Himself and his Family

o Johann Bolzius Writes to Germany About Slave Labor in Carolina and Georgia, 1750

o Job Hortop and the British Enter the Slave Trade, 1567

o Olaudah Equiano describes the middle passage, 1789 –autobiography of slave, middle passage description

o Hugh Jones Describes Virginia’s Slave Society, 1724

o Transcriptions of Virginia Gazette Runaway Slave Ads

o Diagram of 1808 slave ship

o “The Happiest Laboring Class in the World”: Two Virginia Slaveholders Debate Methods of Slave Management, 1837. –terrific document, both for the institution and slave resistance

o Rearing of slave children –advice by planter class -searing

o “Malitis” – great for slave resistance

o Charles Ball’s Journey to South Carolina, 1837—escaping slavery and fearing recapture

o photo of slaves and overseer

o Great Sale of Slaves ad, 1855

o Solomon Northrup Remembers the New Orleans Slave Market

o In the Richmond Slave Market

o Depiction of provision day for slaves, 1860

o White Slaveowners Fear that the Haitian Revolution Has Arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, 1797

o Dressmaker and Former Slave Tells How she gained freedom, 1907

· Work Songs of African-Amercans

§ Ring-Shout Song

§ Trouble So Hard

§ Slave Songs NEW

· Uncle Remus folk tales

Revolutionary Era to the early 19^th century (see slave labor section for this era as well)

· “I Was Sure of Getting a Trade”: John Fitch’s Long Journey Towards Becoming an Artisan, 1760

· Charles Woodmason Visits the Carolina Backcountry, 1768 – plebian culture and anti-elitism

· Herman Husband and the North Carolina Regulators, 1769 North Carolina Regulator movement of farmers, tenants, and laborers challenged the government in the 1760s

· Many Hundreds are Starving for Want of Employment”: John Harrower Leaves London for Virginia, 1774

· “We Are All Equally Free”: New York City Workingmen Demand A Voice in the Revolutionary Struggle

· “Natural and Inalienable Right to Freedom”: Slaves ’Petition for Freedom to the Massachusetts Legislature, 1777

· A Shoemaker and the Tea Party by George Robert Twelve Hewes

· George Hewes’ Recollection of the Boston Massacre

· William Manning, “A Laborer,” Explains Shays Rebellion in Massachusetts

· Massachusetts Yeomen Oppose the “Aristocratickal” Constitution, January, 1788.

· "The Sentiments of a Labourer": William Manning Inquires in the Key of Liberty, 1798 –how ordinary laborer conceived of issues of rights and organizing citizenry

· “The Print of My Ancestors’ Houses are Every Where to be Seen”: Little Turtle Balks at Giving Up Land to General Anthony Wayne, 1795 objection to loss of land

· A Young Woman’s diary 1790s-- how farm households depended on women’s labor (Massachusetts)

· “The Treatment of the Help in Those Days Was Cruel”: Hiram Munger Remembers Factory Life 1790s

· John Doyle Writes Home to Ireland, 1818 –opportunities for the Irish migrant

· A Working Man’s Recollections of America, 1825–35

· Shoemakers in a “ten-footer” shop.

· Pace and Control of Work By Shipyard Artisans and Mechanics, 1830s

· An Old Apprentice Laments Changes in the Workplace, New York, 1826

· ”Dumping Ground at the Foot of Beach Street.” Engraving, scavenging in New York

· A Factory Manager and his Problems, 1829

· Workingmen’s Declaration of Independence, 1829 --by George Evans, founder of NY Workingman’s Party

· Thomas Skidmore's The Rights of Man to Property! (1829)

· Factories are talked about as schools of vice”: Elias Nason Considers Careers

· Is This America?”: An English Family Travels Up the Mississippi to Their New Home in Illinois, 1831

· Equal Rights Party Declaration, 1836

· “A Working Man” Remembers Life in New York City, 1830s

· Excerpt from An Address to the Working-Men of New-England (1832)

· Among Lowell Mill-Girls: A Reminiscence By Lucy Larcom, Atlantic Monthly (Nov. 1881)

· Mill-Girls' Magazines By Lucy Larcom, from A New England Girlhood (1889)

· The Lowell Offering Harriet H. Robinson's memoir of the literary magazine published in the 1840s by the "mill-girls" of Lowell, Massachusetts.

· “Starting for Lowell.” engraving The latest model. engraving

· Prof. Zahavi’s selections on early industrial period, from his website, with emphasis on Lowell Mills

Excerpts from a Ten-Hour Day Circular (1835)
An Account from a Visitor to Lowell (1836)
Orestes A. Brownson on "Free Labor" (1840)
Letters of Emeline Larcom (1840)
A Selection from the Lowell Offering (1844)
"A Second Peep at Factory Life" (From the Lowell Offering, 1845)
Letters of Mary Paul (1845-48)
Poems by Lucy Larcom.
"A Week in the Mill," from the Lowell Offering (1845)
Recruitment of Lowell Operatives (1846)

· Lowell Women Workers Campaign for a Ten Hour Workday

· The Lowell Mills Go on Strike, 1836

· Factory Rules for Lowell Mills, 1848 and other documents from the labor unrest of 1840s

· Timetable of the Lowell Mills (1853)

· Talk Show on the Lowell Strike of 1834 or 1836 lesson plan for High school, with links to primary documents

· Sally Rice on the Life of A Domestic Servant, 1838

· David Johnson Recalls the Shoemakers’ Shops of Lynn, Massachusetts

· I Believe in the Divinity of Labor”: George Ripley Tries to Convince Ralph Waldo Emerson to Join Brook Farm, Boston, 1840

· Dame Shirley Describes Life in Gold Mining Camp, 1850s

· This Muddy Place”: Mary Ballou, a Boardinghouse Keeper in the California Gold Rush, 1852

· I Was a Very Apt Scholar in This Kind of Street Etiquette”: William Otter Brawls His Way Through New York City, 1830s

· New York Police Chief George W. Matsell Describes the City’s Vagrant and Delinquent Children, 1849

· “ We Are Not Slaves”: Female Shoe and Textile Workers in Marblehead, Massachusetts, 1860

· White Artisans in South Contest the Labor of Black Workers, 1838

· “Job Visited by a Master Tailor from Broadway.” Illustration about class stratification, 1841

· “The Great Meeting of Foreigners in the Park.” Anti-immigrant sentiments about labor unrest, 1855

· Comparing Plantation and Factory Rules - a lesson plan with links to primary documents, showing comparison between northern “free labor” textile mills and slave labor plantations

· “Elevate Us to a Free and Independent Position”: William J. Brown Looks for Work, 1831, Rhode Island

· Washington Spradling Discusses the Condition of Free Blacks in the South, 1863 Kentucky

Back to Top

Civil War, Reconstruction and Labor 1863-1877

· Freedmen and Southern Society

· Freedmen's Bureau material on labor

· October 2001 forum discussion on Reconstruction

· African Americans and Racism in the Workplace Bibliography

· Testimony from Victims of New York’s Draft Riots, July, 1863

· A New York Sewing Woman Protests Wages and Working Conditions, 1863: Are We Nothing But Living Machines?

· Photo of ex-slaves scarred back, a sign of slave resistance –photographed in 1863

· Louisiana Planters to the Commander of the Department of the Gulf, January 14, 1863 Writing to Union General Nathaniel P. Banks, sugar planters lamented the effect of slave flight and Union military occupation on plantation operations.

· Testimony by a South Carolina Freedman before the American Freedmen's Inquiry Commission, June 1863 Testifying before a War Department commission that was investigating the condition and prospects of ex-slaves, Harry McMillandiscussed his people's lives in bondage and their aspirations in freedom.

· Plantation Regulations by a U.S. Treasury Agent, February 1864 [image (86K)]A broadside announced the rules governing the employment of black laborers on plantations in Union-occupied Louisiana.

· Meeting between Black Religious Leaders and Union Military Authorities, January 12, 1865 A Northern newspaper reported the proceedings of a remarkable gathering: At Savannah, Georgia, twenty black ministers and lay leaders joined Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and General William T. Sherman to consider the future of the thousands of slaves freed by the march of Sherman's army.

· Sherman’s Special Field Order 15 January 15, 1865 Intending chiefly to disencumber his mobile army of the fugitive slaves who followed in its train, General William T. Sherman reserved a swath of land along the south Atlantic coast for settlement exclusively by former slaves, promising the settlers "possessory title" to small tracts. (this is the basis for the We Demand Land document claims)

· Freedman’s Bureau Archive Documents from The Freedmen’s Bureau—see what kind of labor contracts were secured for freed slaves after the war was over

· Freedmen and Southern Society First hand accounts of life after slavery, and much more—click on the “documents” hyperlink to access sample documents

· “There Was Never Any Pay-day For the Negroes”: Ex-slave Jourdon Anderson Demands Wages (and reparation), 1865

· Fountain Hughes Recalls His Life in Slavery and Freedom, Baltimore, 1944

· When We Worked on Shares, We Couldn’t Make Nothing”: Henry Blake Talks About Sharecropping after the Civil War (document)

· The South’s Recovery: Who Paid the Price of Success?

· “Almost Broken Spirits”: Farmers in the New South -- commodity production affected white and black farmer

· A Year’s Wage for Three Peaches: A Black Man Tells of Exploitation in the Late 19th century South –fear of the chain gang

· Forced Labor in the “New South”, 1904

· White Women Protest the Hiring of Black “Wage-Slaves”

Back to Top

Late 19^th century through Early 20^th century

· America at Work, America at Leisure 150 films accessed from the Library of Congress collections, digitized, 1890s-1915

· Transcontinental Railroad from PBS

· “The Common Laborer” Chapter from David Montgomery’s Fall of the House of Labor brilliant NEW

· Jacob A. Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890)

· Chicago Stockyards, with links to bibliography of sources

· The Pullman Era with links to bibliography of sources

· Steel Industry: Making Steel and Making Men –documents

· The Union Label

· Immigrant Exclusion, at Home and Abroad articles selected by Jim Zwick, mostly on exclusion of Chinese

· Inside the Westinghouse factory, 1904

· On the Lower East Side: Observations of Life in Lower Manhattan at the Turn of the Century This collection of articles, documentary sources, and study guides was compiled to accompany the course, An Urban Experience: New York City's Lower East Side, 1880-1920

· New York Tenement Museum

· Westinghouse Strike 1916 - Coroner's Case Files Cases of three workers killed when Westinghouse marchers went to Braddock and were fired upon by troops.

· Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Mill World - based on the acclaimed book Like A Family, this site includes some primary documents, oral histories, teaching ideas, photos of the Piedmont mill world from late 19th through 1930s

· An IWW Organizer Describes the Horrors of Rural Work, 1915 –seasonal day laborers

· When Toil Meant Trouble: Butte's Labor Heritage

· Marot, Helen. American Labor Unions (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1914; BoondocksNet Edition, 2001). Entire book on-line, from anti-imperialism website.

· An Introduction to American Labor by Groat 1916 book on-line, BoondocksNet edition

· When Toil Meant Trouble: Labor in Butte, Montana (miners, mine disasters, IWW)

· The Saloons in Working Class Culture

· John Henry—culture and legend NEW

Documents

· “Store Pay Is Our Ruin”: The Tyranny of the Company Store 1878, Ohio

· Six Families Budget Their Money, Illinois, 1884

· An Old New York Cabinet Maker: Experiences of Ernest Hagen –handcraft work and resisting mechanization

· Late Nineteenth-Century Rail Worker Describes Management’s Tyranny

The Working Girls of Boston, 1884

· A German Radical Emigrates to America in 1885

· Elfido López Recalls Rural Mexican-American Life in the Late 19th century –transformation of the countryside

· Slumming Among the Unemployed: William Wycoff Studies Joblessness in the 1890s

· A cowboy remembers work as a wage laborer in the late 19^th century

· A Cowboy’s Work is Never Done: George Martin

· African-American Cowboy Will Crittendon

· Shying Away: Samuel Gompers on Steering Clear of the Farmers’ Alliance

· Slumming Among the Unemployed: William Wycoff Studies Joblessness in the 1890s

· A Year’s Wage for Three Peaches: A Black Man Tells of Exploitation in the Late 19th century South –fear of the chain gang

· Forced Labor in the “New South”, 1904

· White Women Protest the Hiring of Black “Wage-Slaves”

· Polish Immigrants Letters Back Home in early 20^th century

“We Ran Silent Movies For Years”: An Italian Immigrant Goes Into Show Business in the Early Twentieth Century

Mother Jones, “Civilization in Southern Mills” (1901)

Home Sweet Home: Building and Loan Associations Lend a Hand 1889-- “self-help” in working class culture

· ““It Was Considered Low Music”: Pianist Eubie Blake on the Birth of Ragtime at the Turn of the Century

· “Cotton Belt Blues”: Lizzie Miles’s Blues Song

· Dancing After Dark: A Rural Woman recalls Farm life in Early 20^th century

· Dissatisfaction of Farm Women, 1913

Asian Laborers in the U.S.

o Immigrant Exclusion, at Home and Abroad articles selected by Jim Zwick, mostly on exclusion of Chinese

o Chinese laborers exclusion act

o “Our Misery and Despair”: Kearney Blasts Chinese Immigration (1878) more on Kearney’s views at San Francisco labor sites

o The Fight Begins at Home: Jewett Defends Asian Immigrants (1878)

o Fair’s Fair: McDonnell Argues for Acceptance of Aliens (1878)

o Eye on the East: Labor Calls for Ban on Chinese Immigration (1901)

o Excerpt from Some Reasons for Chinese Exclusion: Meat vs. Rice (1903 AFL pamphlet)

o “A Foretaste of the Orient”: John Murray Criticizes the AFL for excluding Asian-Americans (1903 farm workers strike)

o A Chinese Immigrant Makes His Home in Turn-of-the-Century America

o “We Chinese Are Viewed Like Thieves and Enemies”: Pun Chi Appeals to Congress to Protect the Rights of Chinese, ca. 1860

o The Union Label
By M. E. J. Kelley, a history of the first uses of union labels, from cigarmakers hostile towards Chinese labor in the 1870s to the start of a broad consumer movement twenty years later aimed at strengthening unions' bargaining power with manufacturers.

o “Asiatic Coolie Invasion” 1906, San Francisco statement of Building Trades unions

Sweatshops/Child Labor

· Sweatshops, then and now - Between a Rock and A Hard Place Smithsonian Exhibition

· Between a Rock and a Hard Place: A History of American Sweatshops, 1820-Present brief summary

· What is Child Labor NEW

· Child Labor In America Photos of Lewis Hine

· Photographs of Lewis Hine: Documentation of Child Labor

· The Campaign to End Child Labor edited by Jim Zwick’-- terrific collection of materials! “The Progressive Era campaign to end child labor, with photographs, political cartoons, songs, poems, essays and books by Jane Addams, Edwin Markham, Scott Nearing, Mother Jones, Felix Adler, Lewis Hine, and others

· Child Labor and Child Labor Reform in American History –links to 2 documents

· How Did Florence Kelley's Campaign against Sweatshops in Chicago in the 1890s Expand Government Responsibility for Industrial Working Conditions?

· No Way Out: Two New York City Firemen Testify about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

· “Oh God, For One More Breath”: Early 20th century Tennessee Coal Miners’ Last Words

· Excerpt from Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (packinghouses in Chicago)

· Working Her Fingers to the Bone: Agnes Nestor’s Story 60 hour weeks in the glove factories

· A Day's Work Making Gloves by Agnes Nestor—Chicago, 1908.

· On the Lower East Side – Life in New York’s tenement district, numerous links to primary documents

· Jacob Riis Tours NewYork City’s Fourth Ward

· Jacob Riis’ How the Other Half Lives

· The Boys in the Breakers (1904)

· No Rest for the Weary: Children in the Coal Mines (1906)

· Mother Jones, “Civilization in Southern Mills” (1901)

· Keating-Owen Child Labor Act (1916)

· Children in Bondage from Zwick site. By Edwin Markham, Benjamin B. Lindsey and George Creel….industry by industry exposé of child labor

· Labor Day Special Pt. II: Mother Jones’ March of the Mill Children 100 Years Later from Democracy Now broadcast

Unemployment/Contingent Labor in the late 19^th, early 20^th century NEW

· “Tramps’ Terror.” 1870s

· Ode to the Odious: A Poet Ridicules Laissez-Faire poling fun at social Darwinism

· Eight Hours in the Forenoon, Eight Hours in the Afternoon”: An IWW Organizer Describes the Horrors of Rural Work

· On the Road Again: Pinkerton on the Tramp

· Certain Fundamental Truths”: The AFL Protests Unemployment

· The Cook and the Governor: Seeing Eye-to-Eye on Unemployment

· Lewelling Defends the Rights of the Unemployed 1893

· Slumming Among the Unemployed: William Wycoff Studies Joblessness in the 1890s

· Pumpkin Smasher” Predicts the Ultimate Redemption of Coal Miners

Miners and mine strikes

· Coal Mining in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era – links to Pictures and Texts-this Ohio State Hist Dept web site gives a wonderful overview of coal mining and its dangers. Material on Mollie Maguires, child labor in the mines, and the 1902 anthracite strike

· Coal and Coal Mining

· Remembering Coal Country

· Coal Mines and Coal Mining 1920s IWW history of the industry and its workers--

· Virtual Museum of Coal Mining in Western Pennsylvania

· Mine country a site dedicated to promoting and preserving the history and culture of the Appalachian Pennsylvania Anthracite Region

· McIntyre, Pennsylvania, The Everyday Life Of A Coal Mining Company Town: 1910-1947 lots of good links to photos and documents

· Tour Coal Mine – link to virtual tour through video

· Fire in the Hole (western mining) link to documentary that covers western mining issues, including Couer d’Alene

· The Work of Coal Miners in the 19^th Century

· Hazards of 19^th century miners

· What Miners Do – UMWA union site including Coal Miners in the Past

· The Coalcracker many links: bootleggers, coal miners trade, etc in eastern Penn.

· Coal Mining, Mining Fires and the Molly Maquires

· Coal Dust: The Early Mining Industry of Indiana County lots of links

· Early Days of Coal Mining in Illinois

· Coal Mining in Illinois early immigant coal miners in Illinois, links to photographs, etc., originating in Coal City Illinois

· Christian County Coal Mine Museum (Illinois)

· Ziegler Illinois coal mine town

· Interview with Paul Dixon, coal miner in Frankfurt, Illinois from University of Illinois, Springfield archives; started in mines in 1922, discussion of Progressive Miners Union, Illinois coal miner dissension against John L. Lewis

· Minonk (Illinois) coal mining

· Mother Jones Monument in Union Miners Cemetery, Mt. Olive Illinois

· Illinois Mining Towns on Rte. 66 Coal Mining in Williamson County, Illinois (Herrin, etc) including fatalities, mine locations NEW

· Down in a Coal Mine 1878, Illinois NEW

· Description of anthracite mining circa 1902

· The Life of a miner (1902)

· The Boys in the Breakers (1904)

· Coal Strike of 1902 –turning point of U.S. Policy NEW

· The Saloon in a Coal Mining Town (Illinois)

· Virden “massacre of I898” and Centennial Commemoration

· The Molly Maguires. From Allan Pinkerton’s depiction

· The Molly Maguires site with links

· Molly Maquires

· Memories of the Molly Maguires Kept Alive

· Digging for Answers: A Black Miner Ponders Racism, 1891

· The Sayings of Henry Stephens –NEW --poem by Carl Sandburg, using the words of an African-American miner in Springfield Illinois

· Pinkertons in the Couer d’Alene Uprising of 1892 (primary document)

· “In the Sight of God”: Woes of a Miner’s Wife, 1900 (document)

· The Ultimate Redemption of Coal Miners (document)

· Mine Disasters 1900-1972

· African American Coal Miner Information Site – locations, bibliography, links NEW

· African American Miners in the United Mine Workers of America

· Union Miners’ Cemetery, Mt. Olive Illinois (cemetery originated because Mt. Olive churches refused burying place for “martyred” miners

· Mother Jones Speaks to Miners

· Mine union radicalism in macoupin and montgomery counties Illinois Victor Hicken article

· Copper mining in Michigan - on line exhibits

· Italian Hall Tragedy - 1913 Michigan Copper Strike the fuller story behind the Woody Guthrie 1913 massacre song

· Kentucky Coal Miners – including section on Harlan County

· African-American Coal Miners of Lynch, Kentucky NEW

· United Mine Workers section of the University of Pittsburgh On-line exhibit, links to police reports, Coal and Iron Police photos

· Somerset County Coal Strike, 1922 - 1923 Pennsylvania

· Windber Pennsylvania Strike For Union 1922-23 primary documents

· The Romance of Southern Illinois Coal

· Herrin “Massacre” – southern Illinois 1922 ILHS, with links to essays

· Herrin Massacre 1922 another site

· Borkowski case– murder of union supporter by the Coal and Iron Police

· Coeur d’Alene Mining District

· Cripple Creek Mining District

· Butte, Montana mining district

· Western Federation of Miners

Cherry Mine Disaster

· Cherry Coal Mine Disaster website – photos, a labor of love and memory

· Story of the Great Cherry Coal Mine Disaster, 1909 (near LaSalle, Illlinois)—worst mining disaster in history

· Eight Days In A Burning Mine –first hand account of Cherry Mine Disaster

· Cherry Mine Disaster Sources (also includes more general material on Illinois coal)

· see also Ludlow and Matewan and Cripple Creek materials, below

Steel Industry

· U.S. Steel Gary Works over 2000 photos, workers and the company town 1906-1971, lesson plans from 4^th grade and above

· Steeltown USA: A Digital Library of Poetry Documents Images

· Making Steel and Making Men –links to documents and photos

· 1919 Steel Strike

Railroad industry

· (see 1877 railroad strike) and Pullman sections

· Transcontinental Railroad from PBS

· Chinese Immigrants and the Building of the Transcontinental Railroad

· Truman Speaks on the 1946 Railroad Strike—using Government power to Tame Labor

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

· Triangle Shirtwaist Fire On-Line Exhibit –numerous primary document selections, photos, etc

· Triange Fire of of 1911 – lots of documents

· Triangle Shirtwaist Trial-documents links included

· Working for the Triangle Shirtwaist Company –document

· Lament for Lives Lost: Rose Schneiderman and the Triangle Fire -document

· No Way Out: Two New York City Firemen Testify about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Fire-document

Calumet 1913 tragedy

Italian Hall Tragedy - 1913 Michigan Copper Strike the fuller story behind the Woody Guthrie 1913 massacre song

· Copper mining in Michigan - on line exhibits (related, nothing on the tragedy)

Labor Organization and Rebellion Late 19^th through early 20^th century

Uncategorized:

· Pilgrims' Progress: A Seventeenth-Century Solution to the Nineteenth-Century Conflict between Labor and Capital

· Law and Order: William Law and the Power of Organization

· A Labor Newspaper Derides the Myth of the Self-Made Man, 1877

· The Man with the Hoe: Labor & Society Debated “Edwin Markham's 1899 poem sparked a debate on issues ranging from the dignity of labor to the effects of imperialism and trusts” -==links, edited by Jim Zwick

· From Frank Donner, Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pp.12-22.

· Excerpt from Strikers, Communists, Tramps, and Detectives by Alan Pinkerton- (document)

· Spies for Hire: Ads for the Pinkerton Detective Agency (primary document)

· The Union Label

1877 uprising

· Paul LeBlanc The Railroad strike of 1877

· Synopsis of the strike: Remembering worker rebellion (UE)

· Another Synopsis focusing on Illinois

· Chicago in the railroad strike of 1877 from Homicide in Illinois website New

· Materials on 1877 from Maryland State Archives, with links to primary documents (newspaper, government, photos) and suggested reading materials and lesson plans

· The Communist Manifesto – Karl Marx

· Fears of the “Tramp Menace” –ad for Gun

· Workers, Indians, Immigrants as the menace to national order

· Re-Assessing Tom Scott, the 'Railroad Prince'

· Jesse James, the railroad robber as folk hero (song) Woody Guthrie Version

· Excerpt from Strikers, Communists, Tramps, and Detectives by Alan Pinkerton-

· "Fair Wages," commentary in the North American Review reflecing on the strike

· Chicago during the 1877 strike – From Chicago Historical Society Haymarket website

· General Strikes Across the Globe

· Siege and Commune of Paris, 1870-1871

Haymarket, 1886 and the Great Upheaval

· Chicago Anarchists on Trial: Evidence from the Haymarket Affair 1886-1887 Extension of the Chicago Historical Society material listed below

· The Dramas of Haymarket - Chicago Historical Society exhibit on Haymarket

· Haymarket Digital Collection - primary source material, especially trial transcripts, of the Chicago Historical Society materials on Haymarket

· Haymarket Massacre Archive

· Haymarket Trial Website

· ILHS site on Haymarket

· PBS site on “8 anarchists” with profiles on each

· Haymarket Graveyards

· Haymarket Bombing- spartacus overview, with links

· The Lucy Parsons Project Wife of Haymarket Martyr, organizer for Knights of Labor and IWW

· Lucy Parsons, Knights of Labor activist and anarchist, another site

· Excerpts from Bruce C. Nelson, Beyond the Martyrs: A Social History of Chicago’s Anarchists, 1870-1900, pp 156-65, 170-173, 177-200.

· From Frank Donner, Protectors of Privilege: Red Squads and Police Repression in Urban America (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pp.12-22.

· Oscar Neebe, The Crimes I have committed

· Louis Lingg’s address to the court

· Albert Parsons Last Words

· Mother Jones on Haymarket from her autobiography

· Terrence Powderly of Knights of Labor Attacks Anarchy and Monopoly

· The Bay View Tragedy at Rolling Mills May 5, 1886

Back to Top

Labor Day/May Day/shorter hours

· 8 hour day poem.htm

· May Day and Labor Day by David Montgomery

· May Day by Scott Molloy

· May Day Fest

· First Labor Day Parade by Ted Watts

· The origins of Labor Day

· Mayday 1886 The Eight Hour Movement

· Printer Albert R. Parsons Testifies before Congress about the Eight Hour Day—1878--labor argues against legal notions of “freedom of contract”

· Holt Labor Library feature on May Day Bibliography, websites links, archives links

· Eight hours for what we will! (1916)

· The Red and Green of May Day

· East St. Louis Labor Days in the 1930s and 1940s

· References for shorters hours and American Labor history

· IWW 4 hour day and shorter work week campaign

· 32 hours—action for full employment Canadian site, with numerous links to European and Canadian websites associated with quest for shorter hours

· The Labor Project for Working Families - advocacy and policy organization providing technical assistance, resources, and education to unions and union members on family issues in the workplace including: Childcare, Elder care, Family leave, Work hours, Quality of life.

· Shorter Work Time Group U.S. based group

· San Francisco’s fight for shorter hours

Back to Top

Knights of Labor

· “The Baby Was Made ’Delegate No. 800’”: Frances Willard Meets Elizabeth Rodgers in the 1880s Knights of Labor and women

· Altared States: Marriage Ends an Organizer’s Career Knights of Labor and women

· Racial Controversy at the Richmond 1886 Convention

· Drawing the Line on Black-White Equality –1886 convention

· “Making Common Cause”: The Knights’ Assembly Hall diverse social, political, and intellectual functions that the meeting hall played for its members

· “In the Beginning . . .”: A Knight’s Sacred Oath

· Divided We Conquer: A White Plantation Owner Undermines the Knights of Labor

· Making Common Cause”: The Knights’ Assembly Hall diverse social, political, and intellectual functions that themeeting hall played for its member

· When Women Were Knights short synopsis-ILHS

· Boycott Fever

· Great Burlington Strike of 1888 collection

· Virden “massacre of I898” and Centennial Commemoration

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AFL/Samuel Gompers

· Samuel Gompers Papers – links to biography, photos, documents on a variety of issues, timeline, bibliography etc

· AFL founding convention summary by Paul LeBlanc

· American Federation of Labor series of primary document and a 1913 directory of its affiliated unions.

· Biographical sketch of Samuel Gompers Quotations from Samuel Gompers on Immigration, Socialism, Child Labor, and many other subjects

· Making the Case for Socialism in the AFLJ. Mahlon Barnes of the Cigarmakers’ International Union and member of the Socialist Labor Party, helped defeat AFL leader Samuel Gompers for the Presidency of the AFL in 1894. Here he criticizes Gompers style of unionism

· The AFL Protests Unemployment, 1893

· Chapter 26 from Samuel Gompers, Seventy Years of Life and Labor (1925).-from Prof. Gerald Zahavi’s course

Labor and Religion in 19^th century

· Was Christ a Union Man?

· The Workingman’s Ten Commandments, 1878

Overview of Links on this Site –Click to go to these subjects NEW indicates new to my site, not necessarily a new site

Key/General Weblinks

Reference

Teachers’ Corner – Lesson plans

Labor Systems of Early America

Slave Labor

Revolutionary Era to the early 19th century (see slave labor section for this era as well)

Civil War, Reconstruction and Labor 1863-1877

Late 19th century through Early 20th century

Mother Jones, “Civilization in Southern Mills” (1901)

Home Sweet Home: Building and Loan Associations Lend a Hand 1889-- “self-help” in working class culture

Asian Laborers in the U.S.

Sweatshops/Child Labor

Unemployment/Contingent Labor in the late 19th, early 20th century NEW

Miners and mine strikes

Cherry Mine Disaster

Steel Industry

Railroad industry

Triangle Shirtwaist Fire

Calumet 1913 tragedy

Italian Hall Tragedy - 1913 Michigan Copper Strike the fuller story behind the Woody Guthrie 1913 massacre song

Labor Organization and Rebellion Late 19th through early 20th century

Haymarket, 1886 and the Great Upheaval

Labor Day/May Day/shorter hours

Knights of Labor

AFL/Samuel Gompers

Labor and Religion in 19th century

Revolutionary Era to the early 19^th century (see slave labor section for this era as well)

Late 19^th century through Early 20^th century

Unemployment/Contingent Labor in the late 19^th, early 20^th century NEW

Labor Organization and Rebellion Late 19^th through early 20^th century

Labor and Religion in 19^th century